While real life soccer hooligans like me are content to watch the Copa America for their summertime football fix, several nerds thought it’d be a good idea to have robots play the beautiful game. Thus we have the RoboCup, a Georgia Tech-hosted festival of robots and the nerds who build (and love) them for the purpose of advancing the field of robotics. While soccer isn’t the only sport or activity that the robots participate in it’s clearly the best. Not just because I’m biased toward the sport, but because it’s the best way to showcase the robots’ mobility and so forth. Imagine, a robot Messi tearing through a robot Getafe defense. As Ray Hudson would say, Magic!

RoboCup’s last day is tomorrow, so get your bets in now.

Robocup via AP/Yahoo!